This is an original post from May 16, 2016 that was on my personal blog.  However, since Fiona is such a big part of my life, I wanted to share with you.   I’ll put an update at the bottom.

16 May 2017

Back in 2010, we were visiting my hubby’s grandma, she lived in West Monroe, Louisiana.  We were out and about on that Saturday and ran across a lady selling puppies in a shopping center.  I don’t know why I wanted to stop, or what caught my eye, but I begged my hubby to stop so I could look at the puppies.   He stopped, because I can be quite a nag (imagine that).  There inside this crate were the most beautiful daschund puppies I have ever seen!  Black and Tans, oh yes, but even more so, there were 3 piebald doxies. I grabbed one of them so fast!  She is a beautiful piebald with patches of Isabelle and Dapple mixed in with the white.  She’s got some pink in her nose and one blue eye and one dark brown eye.  She is amazing and (after lots of begging) she is mine!

These past 6 years with my Fiona have been…interesting.

I missed one of her boosters and she ended up with Parvo.  If you don’t know, Parvo kills puppies.  Very fast.  The black lab we adopted from a shelter had it as well.  So they got treated at the same time, which made it easier, I guess.  I totally get why it has such a night mortally rate, it drains your body in such a way that it’s so very hard to overcome.  But with a blood transfusion, hospital stays, an IV and a really good vet (and some kick-ass medication), you can beat it.  Oh yeah, it helps to either have 1) lots of money laying around that you have no other use for or 2) a credit card with low interest/no interest with several thousands of dollars free on it or 3) a parent that will take pity on your plight and help you finance your pet’s care.   After 10 of the scariest days (in a while) we got a thumbs up from the vet and we were able to breathe a sigh of relief and start making plans for the future.  This was 2011.  We hauled us all up to Alaska for vacation that year (6 weeks in an RV with 3 boys, 4 dogs, the hubby and I).

Fast forward to 2015.  We have gone on holiday to DisneyWorld (again) and we’ve taken the “girls” with us – that is, we have thedapple doxie (Fraulein) and my Fiona with us.  The boys (Faris-the black lab, and Fritz, the mini Black and Tan doxie) are home protecting the house from invaders.  We don’t vacation with Faris any longer, not after the diaster that was the South by Southwest Vacation (2012 – or the California Adventure).  Anyway, one night Fiona isn’t eating,  she was all lethargic and non-responsive.  This was very unlike her.  Very.  So we made her as comfortable as we could for the night and found a vet that next morning.  It seemed she was dehydrated (duh) and may have had pancreatitis.  So we treated her for that and went on.  The next day we were back at the vet’s as she had not improved.  They kept her for a while, gave her fluids (via IV, and then a subQ before we picked her up) and told us to feed her some potted chicken.  There was one more visit for some fluids, but we had to start making our way home.  She was eating some and drinking on her own, so yeah!

Then, the Sunday night that we got home things took a turn for the worse.  She started to have like a seizure or a stroke-like event.  We  tried to keep her safe for the night and took her to our vet that morning.  She, at this point, was unable to walk, and was curled into a ball except her neck/head was very stiff and going the opposite way of her body.  It was scary.  Our Vet send her
to an Internal Medicine Doctor at a specialty hospital.  The details of what happened next is kinda a blur to me.  My Fiona ended up staying with them for a week, and in that time frame, she had a CT scan, chemotherapy and had spinal fluid extracted (I don’t remember what that’s called), as well as a crap-load of fluids and medications.  I would go see her everyday for as long as they would let me.  On Wednesday of that week, she was not doing any better and we, the Vet, Dr. Cunningham and myself, were starting the talks about quality of life discussion.  Dr. Cunningham was off on Thursday and I had to discuss her care with one of the other doctors who was looking after her that day when I went to visit her.  On that day, I cried many tears! When they brought her to me, she was sitting up, and was wagging her tail when she saw me! Oh happy day! She was so much improved – it was amazing!  It was so hard to leave her that night, but I did.  And on Friday, I got to bring her home.

She has meningitis.  It appears that mini or toy breeds or certain dogs are susceptible to getting meningitis.  It’s not contagious (that’s good news).  This sickness strikes these certain breeds between 6 months and 5 years old.  She was just 5 when it happened.  Dr. Cunningham states that the life expectancy of my Fiona will be much less than ordinary now.  Dr. Cunningham said that in her experience most dogs will survive 6 months to 3, maybe 4 years, at the longest.  Because of this,  our lives have changed dramatically since then.

Fiona goes anywhere she can with me.  We have become quite the pair.  She’s always at my heel, if not under my feet.  If she can go with me to where ever I am going, she goes.  She sleeps in the bed with me, most of the time at my head or at my feet.  If she’s not sitting in “my” chair with me, she’s at my feet.  She gets medication 5 times a day, 7a, 11a, 3p, 5p and 11p.  So everything that I do, all my appointments or whatever I am planning, I have to make sure that I have her medication schedule in mind. Thankfully, I have an amazing hubby who helps me with medication if I’m not around. One funny thing about all of this: I have an alarm set on my phone for all her medication times.  It appears that I have her “trained” to the song.  Actually, all the dogs and even the cat are “trained” to the song.  They all hear it and head to the kitchen.  I give Fiona her pills in cheese or lunch meat and they all get a nibble if they are there. They all understand the “you snooze, you lose” aspect of nibbles.  It is interesting to see.

In July it will be a year since her diagnosis.  Looking at her, you would never know there is anything wrong with her.  She has lost vision in her brown eye (that happened during a really bad flare up around Christmas 2015), so she might walk into a wall or hit a corner if she’s in a strange place.  She’s gotten a bit fatter…she’s on steroids (5mg a day), so she thinks she needs to eat all the time.  She can’t jump up onto things like she used to, so you have to lift her onto the sofa, or the bed or into the car now. But all things considered, it’s a small price to pay to have her with us.

I’ve been trying to post some photos of her, along with the other dogs (and the cat), but I can’t seem to make it happen right now. So I’ll wrap up this post by promising to add at least one photo of my Fiona soon and say that even though she may not be with me for much longer, I just adore her.  She’s a money pit, but she loves me no matter how many pills I give her, or how often I have to shove a syringe of medication in her mouth.  She’s always happy to see me and snuggle with me.  She loves me just as much as I love her, which is quite a bit.  Even if she does pee on my floor constantly.

**update:  19 June 2017 **

It’s two years later and my princess Fiona is still here, ruling the house (at least in her mind).   She lost her BFF, our 17 year old cat, Kitty, a little more than a month ago.  Fiona and Fritz, as much as we could tell, are the ones that found Kitty when he was close to death.  Richard and I were outside and heard lots of panic sounding barking. We got in the house and Fiona and Fritz had been, and this is speculation on my part, licking or nudging him to get up because his entire coat was wet, and there wasn’t any blood or bite marks on him.  He passed in my arms a few moments after we picked him up.  Fiona’s behavior for the next few days was what I can only describe as depressed.  She’d wander around the house looking in his favourite places to be for him.  It was really sweet and extremely depressing at the same time.

As I said earlier in the post, she goes with me everywhere she can.  Richard and I understand her barks, her growls and her “moans” if you will.  She has really good days where she’s almost playful and then she has really bad days where she just wants to be held and loved on (just like me).  Most of the time, she’s “normal”; that is she’s active with the other dogs, she’s in the house, she’s out of the house.  She’s barking at those pesky squirrels and birds, and trying to eat everything in site.  She’s never far from where I am.  She had a “nest” where I do my computer work (using the Christmas pillow the boys hate), where I paint, where I sleep, and in the living room.  She doesn’t have a “nest” in the outside studio, usually she’ll just find the laundry basket of clay covered towels and aprons and crawl in it to hang out with me.  She doesn’t “sun” herself anymore….the hair on her backside and the top of head has never grown back (nor will it) and she’s actually losing hair in those places and on her ears, so she’s starting to sunburn.  She’s learned that sunburns are painful and not fun to deal with, so she will stay in the shade, but looking at her, you’d think she was still in the sun just with how she’s laying on the ground.

Overall, I think she’s doing well.  I try to stay off the internet and not google her condition.  Sometimes it’s better to not know.  She’s happy, I’m happy and I am so very thankful for Dr. Cunningham and all the tech’s at Blue Pearl for all her care.  I just love my Fiona so very much.  And I think that most of the time she loves me too.